Posts tagged as:

kgb

The spy who loved me: Charlotte Philby returns to Moscow in search of her grandfather Kim Philby

8 March 2010

The Indepdent, 6 March 2010: . . . As well as being my grandfather – whom I remember from childhood trips to Russia as a funny old man with a beaming smile, who dressed almost exclusively in white vests and braces – Kim Philby, to this day, remains one of the most significant double agents [...]

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Was Michael Foot a national treasure or the KGB’s useful idiot?

8 March 2010

Daily Telegraph, 5 March 2010: . . . . The obituaries mentioned that, in 1995, Michael Foot won libel damages against The Sunday Times, for saying he had been an agent of the KGB during the Cold War. These accusations came from Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB officer who defected from the Soviet Union to Britain [...]

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Former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev adds to his pile with The Independent

5 March 2010

Times of London, 4 March 2010: Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB spy, is the new owner of The Independent, industry sources told The Times. The purchase of the loss-making title and The Independent on Sunday comes after the Russian billionaire’s surprise takeover of the London Evening Standard for £1 last January. . . . .
. [...]

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KGB secrets to be published

24 February 2010

Baltic Reports, 24 Feb 10: President Dalia Grybauskaitė Wednesday ordered that all documents relating to the KGB secret services in Lithuania be released for the general public to view. The order to release the documents is part of what is known as the “lustration” process, which is the outing and punishing of former KGB agents [...]

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Reality tourism gets unnerving at KGB jail

17 February 2010

Metro World News, 17 Feb 10: “You are now the property of the Soviet government!” barks the impossibly huge guard, “Do not think of escaping. There is no way out of here. You will do exactly what we tell you!” As hotel welcomes go, I’ve had gentler. But this is no ordinary hotel, this is [...]

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NeoClassics Films brings L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL to the US in May; story of KGB officer Vladimir Vetrov

12 February 2010

Broadway World, 11 Feb 10: Canadian-based NEOCLASSICS FILMS LTD. has acquired all US rights to the international hit thriller L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL from Pathé International. A film by Christian Carion, whose MERRY CHRISTMAS was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film in 2006, and produced by Christophe Rossignon, the cold war era spy epic [...]

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The KGB on how to destablize and destroy a country

8 February 2010

Big Journalism, 6 Feb 10: A blast from the past, and a warning for the future. There’s some typical KGB boasting here — and remember that, in the end, they lost — but it’s worth watching and paying heed to:

Maybe it’s also time we brought ourselves up to speed on the Soviet illegals program, the [...]

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Liberation Theology and the KGB

2 February 2010

AEI/American, 2 Feb 10: The presence of Marxism in liberation theology is well-known, at least to seminarians who are critical readers. Practically every seminarian reads Gustavo Gutierrez’s Theology of Liberation at some point, but most laypeople find it hard to believe that there could have been (and continues to be) a widespread attempt to hybridize [...]

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Sorge’s spy is brought in from the cold

1 February 2010

Japan Times, 31 Jan 10: Long reviled in his homeland and all but forgotten by Moscow, a Japanese former Soviet agent in Tokyo is finally accorded the respect that his devoted niece has sought for so long.
Toshiko Tokuyama was 14 years old when she found out that her uncle had been a spy, and that [...]

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Ottawa rejects former KGB agent’s deportation appeal

29 January 2010

National Post, 28 Jan 10: The Harper government’s new public safety minister has rejected a fresh appeal to stay in Canada from a former KGB agent who has been holed up in a Vancouver church for the last seven months. Vic Toews, who took over the portfolio last week from Peter Van Loan, said Thursday [...]

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1960 CI History: Spy’s Sister Admits Contacts

28 January 2010

International Herald Tribune, 27 January 1960: KARLSRUHE, GERMANY — Alleged spy Horst Ludwig received mysterious orders from Soviet intelligence shortly before he was posted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization naval base at Lossiemouth, Scotland, the West German Supreme Court was told today [Jan. 27]. Ludwig’s sister, Mrs. Hanni Jaeger, told the court she received [...]

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Operation INFEKTION: Soviet Bloc Intelligence and Its AIDS Disinformation Campaign

27 January 2010

CIA, 27 Jan 10: New “Studies in Intelligence” posted. Includes:
Operation INFEKTION: Soviet Bloc Intelligence and Its AIDS Disinformation Campaign
The practice of intelligence differed considerably between East and West during the Cold War. Western intelligence services were most commonly tasked with gathering information, but their Soviet bloc counterparts placed much greater emphasis on deception operations [...]

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Former ‘mole-hunter’ Stephen De Mowbray speaks out

26 January 2010

BBC, 26 Jan 10: For 30 years Stephen De Mowbray has maintained a self-imposed silence on a career that once took him to the heart of one of British intelligence’s most controversial episodes. In 1979 he quit his job with the Secret Service because he believed officials had failed to take seriously the claim that [...]

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Soviet spy map reveals Norfolk secrets

21 January 2010

Norfolk Eastern Daily Press, 21 Jan 10: Even for people who live in Norfolk the pronunciation of names such as Happisburgh, Costessey and Wymondham can prove tricky. However, we are left to wonder if Russian cartographers, given the task of translating the place names for a map of the county produced during the Cold War [...]

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Che Guevara Exposed

21 January 2010

Townhall, 21 Jan 10: . . . .In a famous speech in 1961, Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates,” commanded Guevara. “Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.” “Youth,” wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as [...]

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CIA vs KGB: “Moscow Rules” – From Someone Who’s Been There, Done That

11 January 2010

Michael Sellers, 11 Jan 10: I’ve been asked a number of times about “Moscow Rules” — a term which has found its way into the lexicon of intelligence, both fiction and reality, referring to a set of “rules” that describe how intelligence officer’s had to operate in the extraordinarly hostile Moscow environment during the Cold [...]

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CIA vs KGB: My Chapter in Rem Krassilnikov’s “Ghosts of Tchaikovskiy Street”

7 January 2010

Michael Sellers, 7 Jan 10: Rem Krassilnikov was the KGB spymaster who was responsible for defensive KGB operations against the CIA in Moscow from 1979-1989. He is considered to be the inspiration for John Le Carre’s character “Karla” — the KGB counterpart to MI6’s George Smiley in Le Carre’s Book. Following is an excerpt taken [...]

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KGB Attempt to Recruit NBC Reporter

6 January 2010

Gawker, 6 Jan 10: Former NBC News reporter Irving R. Levine, who died last year, was a hilariously nerdy TV presence: A soft-spoken, bow-tied mensch. So it’s surprising to learn, via declassified FBI files, that he deftly parried KGB attempts to blackmail him. . . . It turns out that Levine was among the first [...]

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Fugitive oligarch feared assassination by Russian secret services

4 January 2010

Daily Telegraph, 4 Jan 10: Private investigators smuggled themselves onto a gated estate on a milk float to spy on an exiled Russian oligarch who had allegedly masterminded a $1bn fraud of associates of Vladimir Putin, it has been claimed.
The businessman had fled to Britain as the Russian Prime Minister’s associates conducted an investigation into [...]

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British spook tells how KGB heavies ‘debagged’ him at minus 27 for snapping secret site

4 January 2010

Daily Mail, 3 Jan 10: A British spy endured the frostiest treatment the Soviet Union could deliver at the height of the Cold War. The naval attaché was pounced on and debagged at minus 27 degrees by KGB agents who spotted him spying in Leningrad.
The incident in February 1979 was deemed so sensitive that confidential [...]

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Top secret Soviet operation was “for the sake of Afghan people”

29 December 2009

RT, 27 Dec 09: The storming Afghan president Hafizullah Amin’s palace in 1979 by a group of Soviet special forces was one of history’s most audacious special unit operations.
Although a success, it marked the beginning of a disastrous war for the Soviet Union. RT spoke with a former Alpha commander, Oleg Balashov, who led the [...]

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Veterans Remember Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan 30 Years On

29 December 2009

RFE/RL, 24 Dec 09: Twenty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Valery Vostrotin had never seen combat before when the elite Soviet paratroop company he commanded was briefed by a KGB general on the afternoon of December 27, 1979.
Vostrotin’s unit had been guarding the Kabul palace of communist President Hafizullah Amin. The ruthless Afghan leader had begged the Soviets to [...]

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Ex-Soviets, North Korea Conspiring to Arm Iran

23 December 2009

Newsmax, 22 Dec 09: In an amazingly ironic twist, the second foiled shipment this year of North Korean arms bound for Iran led to five former members of the Soviet air force being thrown into the same Bangkok prison where the former owner of their plane is incarcerated – notorious arms trafficker and ex-Soviet military [...]

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Interviewing Kim Philby and drinking with the KGB

22 December 2009

The Tribune, 22 Dec 09: . . . . I had feelers out everywhere, and eventually got a call from somebody who said he represented something called the Soviet Copyright Agency.
We met in a bar and he told me that an interview was “not impossible” to arrange, subject to a few rules. First, the interview, [...]

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Vatican Sends Anti-Communist Message with Sainthood Picks

22 December 2009

LifeSite News, 21 Dec 09: The Vatican has sent the world a message of Catholicism’s fundamental opposition to communism with the announcement this weekend from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Three of the greatest twentieth century opponents to the communist and socialist ideologies, Pope John Paul II, Pope Pius XII and the Polish [...]

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Give former KGB agent Mikhail Lennikov the gift of freedom: MPs

21 December 2009

Vancouver Sun, 21 Dec 09: Two B.C. members of Parliament invoked the spirit of Christmas Sunday as they called for the government to back down and allow former KGB agent Mikhail Lennikov to stay in Canada.
“Christmas is the season of giving and forgiveness, the season of generosity,” said Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh at a news [...]

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Former KGB agent in Vancouver wants federal government to reconsider deportation

21 December 2009

Canadian Press, 18 Dec 09: A former KGB agent who has been hiding in a Vancouver church for the past six months to avoid deportation says the federal government should reconsider his case in light of thousands of pages of newly released documents.
Mikhail Lennikov, who has lived in Canada with his wife and child for [...]

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Former Spy Tries to Expand Newspaper Holdings in Britain

18 December 2009

New York Times, 18 Dec 09: The former Soviet spy Aleksandr Y. Lebedev is seeking to expand his British media empire by adding The Independent and Independent on Sunday newspapers, less than a year after buying a London daily tabloid.
Independent News & Media, the publisher of the two struggling papers, said Friday that it [...]

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Foreign affairs? Yes please. Our former Man in Washington says FO chappies have always been partial to bedroom diplomacy

17 December 2009

Daily Mail, 17 Dec 09: . . . . . My first posting was to Moscow in 1968 in the depths of the Cold War. I was an innocent, unmarried 24-year-old. I had been warned in London to beware of KGB honey traps.
I travelled to Moscow on an aircraft carrying the new British Ambassador, [...]

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Oleg Kalugin: How We Invaded Afghanistan

14 December 2009

Foreign Policy/Oleg Kalugin, 11 Dec 09:
Gen. Kalugin is an instructor at the CI Centre.
I was the head of the KGB’s foreign counterintelligence branch when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The fateful order to send our military into such difficult terrain was by no means a foregone conclusion. Before Soviet leaders made [...]

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Former communist officer occupies high post in Czech BIS

11 December 2009

Czech Happenings, 11 Dec 09: Vladimir Palecek, a high-ranking member of the Czech civilian counter-intelligence service BIS, was a former communist secret police StB officer who worked there for 14 years before the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today.
According to the documents from the Interior Ministry´s [...]

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Battle of Hitler’s skull prompts Russia to reveal all

8 December 2009

Times of London, 9 Dec 09: Deep in the Lubyanka, headquarters of Russia’s secret police, a fragment of Hitler’s jaw is preserved as a trophy of the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany. A fragment of skull with a bullet hole lies in the State Archive.
So when American academics claimed that DNA tests showed the [...]

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Belarusian Activists Abducted, Blindfolded, Dumped In Forest

8 December 2009

RFE/RL, 8 Dec 09: In what could mark a worrying new trend in Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s Belarus, two prominent opposition activists say they were briefly abducted over the weekend by assailants they believe are tied to the secret services.
Zmitser Dashkevich, the leader of the Young Front opposition movement, told RFE/RL’s Belarus Service he was seized [...]

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Kazakh leader removes head of KNB security service

8 December 2009

Reuters, 8 Dec 09: Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev has removed the head of the Central Asian country’s security service after it clashed publicly with other law enforcement bodies.
Amangeldy Shabdarbayev, head of the KNB security service, was moved to the post of adviser to Nazarbayev, the president’s office said in a statement late on Monday. Nazarbayev [...]

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Hitler’s Remains Were Destroyed on KGB Orders, Interfax Reports

7 December 2009

Bloomberg, 7 Dec 09: Adolf Hitler’s remains were burned and dumped into an East German river by Soviet agents 25 years after the end of World War II, Interfax reported, citing Vasily Khristoforov, the Federal Security Service’s chief archivist.
The remains of Hitler, his companion Eva Braun and the family of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph [...]

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Tikhonov, ‘Shtirlitz’ Actor, Dead

7 December 2009

Moscow Times, 7 Dec 09: Film actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, known for his roles as the Soviet spy Shtirlitz and a Russian prince in “War and Peace,” died Friday. He was 81. . . . “He was an actor who became part of our national psyche,” movie director Sergei Ursulyak said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Tikhonov was known in [...]

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Baroness Ashton’s husband Peter Kellner wooed by KGB

7 December 2009

Times of London, 6 Dec 09: THE husband of Europe’s new foreign minister has disclosed that he was targeted by the KGB as a source in the 1980s.
Peter Kellner, the pollster and political commentator who is married to Baroness Ashton, spoke about the encounter as his wife faces scrutiny over her previous role at the [...]

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Vladimir Putin praises Stalin for creating a superpower and winning the war

4 December 2009

Times of London, 4 Dec 09: Joseph Stalin sent millions to their deaths during his reign of terror, and his name was taboo for decades, but the dictator is a step closer to rehabilitation after Vladimir Putin openly praised his achievements.
The Prime Minister and former KGB agent used an appearance on national television to give [...]

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“KGB and other poems…”

3 December 2009

RFE/RL, 2 Dec 09: Igor Pomerantsev has been working for RFE/RL’s Russian Service for 22 years. In addition to his work as a broadcaster, he has also authored more than 10 books . . . .
. . . . His most recent book, “KGB and other poems…” was published in Ukraine. Igor describes the [...]

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Stalin murdered 20million people, including my grandfather – it’s terrifying that Putin is turning him into a hero

3 December 2009

Daily Mail, 2 Dec 09: Fifty-six years have passed since Josef Stalin died, unattended by doctors because his closest aides lived in such fear of the Soviet dictator that they dared not even approach his deathbed. But ever since, his ghost, and the ghosts of the 20 million he killed, have refused to lie quiet. [...]

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Alexander Litvinenko: A very Russian poisoning

2 December 2009

Daily Telegraph, 2 Dec 09: Three years ago, a Soviet defector was assassinated on British soil. Why was he murdered? And who was behind it? In the most detailed account of the killing yet, former Russian military intelligence officer Boris Volodarsky reveals all. . . . .
. . . . His first claim to fame [...]

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Putin’s folly

1 December 2009

American Thinker, 1 Dec 09: . . . . . Russia has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for years, and its police force is infamous for being more dangerous to citizens than Russia’s criminals. Russian ruler Vladimir Putin’s administration has been characterized from the beginning by a seemingly endless string [...]

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Ex-spy’s daughter at funeral: I’m not ashamed of you

1 December 2009

YNet, 30 Nov 09: Ex-spy Shabtai Kalmanovich, was murdered Monday in Moscow was laid to rest Thursday at a Petah Tikva cemetery. Dozens of mourners attended the funeral……
……Zichroni defended Kalmanovich’s image: “The Israeli public knew him on the backdrop of the criminal case against him that accused him of spying. But he wasn’t accused of [...]

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Up Close and Personal: Eugene Kaspersky

1 December 2009

The Star, 28 Nov 09: EUGENE Kaspersky was never a “KGB man” or a lieutenant in the KGB. Instead the 44-year-old Russian is a colourful figure in the world of computer security who has an insatiable appetite to do everything. That’s just the way he was built. “I want to be everywhere,” he tells StarBizWeek. [...]

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Former Olympics chief Juan Antonio Samaranch linked to KGB, book claims

1 December 2009

Daily Telegraph, 23 Nov 09: Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former head of the International Olympic Committee, worked in close association with the KGB, a new Russian book has claimed. The authors of The KGB Plays Chess even go as far as alleging Mr Samaranch may owe his election to the top Olympic job to the [...]

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Layton man recalls days on the run from Soviet KGB

21 November 2009

Deseret News, 20 Nov 09: At times when he was running for his life, only a few steps ahead of the Soviet KGB, Mike Ramsdell always considered himself a “farm boy from Bear River City, Utah.”
Ramsdell spoke Friday at the Utah Farm Bureau Federation at the Davis Convention Center about the most harrowing ordeal of his [...]

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Russia’s dissident-killing machine continues unchecked

19 November 2009

Daily Maverick/South Africa, 19 Nov 09: Old habits die hard. Like the habit of killing people you don’t want around. Stick them in a gulag (read Alexandr Solzhenitsyn), like the former Soviets did, or send them off to a mental asylum so that their brains slowly rot under a deluge of psychotic substances. But “modern” [...]

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New book alleges Samaranch KGB link

16 November 2009

Play the Game, 16 Nov 09:
A new book by Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky alleges that former IOC President, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was a member of the Soviet Union’s infamous spy network, the KGB. German journalist Jens Weinreich, an expert in sports politics, takes a look at the evidence for Play the Game.
Did IOC Honorary President [...]

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Germany drops charges against Dmitri Kovtun over Litvinenko poisoning

13 November 2009

Times of London:  Germany has dropped attempts to prosecute one of the Russians accused of involvement in the assassination of the Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko.
In a blow to Britain’s efforts to extradite the former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoy to stand trial for murder, German prosecutors closed their case against his business partner Dmitri Kovtun.
Mr Kovtun, [...]

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Former Estonian Foreign Intel Chief on Spy Hermann Simm

12 November 2009

Axis Globe:
The Russian intelligence used its agent in Estonia Herman Simm in full, the former head of the Estonian Foreign intelligence Ants Frosch believes.  Speaking today morning on air of the Estonian TV program Terevisioon, Frosch declared that recruitment of the agent and his further work for an intelligence agency of other country first of [...]

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